Anchor Brewing Company

Anchor Brewing Company is an American alcoholic beverage producer, operating a
brewery and distillery on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, California. The brewery
was founded in 1896, and was purchased by its current owner, Frederick Louis
Maytag III, in 1965, saving it from closure. It moved to its current location in
1979. It is one of the last remaining breweries to produce California Common
beer, also known as Steam Beer, a trademark owned by the company.

Anchor Brewery is largely responsible for the growth of the microbrewery
movement in the United States. After prohibition ended in the U.S., many small,
locally-operated breweries were able to re-open and recommence brewing (although
many more, perhaps most, were not). The vast majority of these concerns served
only the immediate vicinity of their sole plant, a radius of a few miles to
perhaps a 100 or so. Local breweries and beers were the source of local pride in
many communities, especially those with large populations of German, Polish, or
Czech extraction. Many of these thrived on through World War II and into the
1950s. Most did not survive the 1950s, however, due to the influence of
television advertising and the mass marketing tactics of major national
breweries such as Anheuser-Busch, Schlitz, Pabst, and Miller. The whole idea of
such beers and breweries was largely forgotten in the U.S. Maytag desired to
establish such a small-scale brewery, with small-town quality and taste being
the hallmarks of his beer. He was already a fan of Anchor Steam Beer when he
learned that the brewery was about to close. In 1965, Maytag purchased 51
percent of the brewery for a few thousand dollars, and later purchased the
brewery outright.

Things began to change in the 1980s when Maytag's signature brew, Anchor Steam
Beer, began to achieve national notice. Demand skyrocketed from only a few
thousand cases a year that he had been making in the old tradition. His success
prompted many imitators, which he welcomed, since he could not have produced
Anchor Steam in the mass quantities of Budweiser or similar mass-marketed brands
and made a product with which he and his consumers would have been satisfied.
The rise of modern microbreweries also encouraged the establishment of
"brewpubs", where beer is brewed on the premises in small batches for
consumption in what is often something of a fine-dining restaurant setting.
Anchor and other microbreweries have been the beneficiaries of a trend to drink
smaller quantities of higher quality alcoholic beverages of all types which has
been developing in the United States since the 1970s. Anchor Brewing remains the
only commercially demanded producer of steam beer in the United States.

How Anchor got started
In the summer of 1965, a young Stanford grad named Fritz Maytag frequented the
Old Spaghetti Factory, a restaurant in San Francisco's North Beach known more
for its eclectic decor, bohemian clientele, and Anchor Steam Beer than its
spaghetti. One fortuitous day, as the great-grandson of the founder of the
Maytag appliance company sat at the bar enjoying his glass of Anchor Steam, the
restaurant's owner, Fred Kuh, mentioned to Fritz that if he liked Steam Beer, he
had better hurry down to see the Brewery. Kuh, who had always proudly served
just one beer on draught, Anchor Steam, knew that Fritz would appreciate the
historic little San Francisco brewery that was about to close its doors forever.

When Fritz arrived at the Brewery on 8th Street, it was love at first sight,
somewhat blinding him to equipment that was practically medieval, cleanliness
(the most unsung secret to consistently good beer, as Fritz would soon discover)
that was not even a low priority, and a Brewery bank balance (as of December 31,
1964) of $128. On September 24, 1965, Fritz bought 51% of the operation—for a
few thousand dollars—rescuing Anchor from imminent bankruptcy. That was the easy
part, for it would take Fritz the next ten years to turn the ailing Brewery and
its Steam Beer around.